Okay, sales pros – you really want to have healthy responses to rejection. You want to move on without risking time in court and your career.

I highly recommend the old-school thinking of “Yes, No, Next” after every selling encounter.

YES! You got the sale, that’s good.

NO! You got rejected, that’s good, too.

NEXT! Either way the prospect goes, we’re on to the next buyer.

I dedicate over 30 pages to the mental health of sales pros in my upcoming book, The Guide to Ultimate Sales Training (Pfeiffer, 2012). For details, contact me at the new email address Dan@GotInfluenceInc.com.

This 900 page encyclopedia of best-practices in sales training is being published by Pfeiffer, probably the most prestigious corporate publishing house (a Wiley/Jossey-Bass imprint). In addition the book will be co-marketed globally with the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD.org), the largest training association on the planet with over 70,000 members. Because of this exposure, it’s anticipated that language rights will be issued around the planet.

This monster project represents 30 years of my unique and useful body of work contributing to the sales community.

It is incredibly comprehensive, with things you might never consider building into training.

For example, there are over 30 pages on mental health for sales pros. This covers handling rejection, self-talk, optimism and more.

It covers creating energy during the day by both mentally escaping from work regularly and eating properly at lunch. Tell a sales executive you can reduce or remove energy dips late in the day and you have a friend for life.

The Ultimate Objection-handling Tool is an amazing process I created to navigate the dangers of prospect resistance and move your sales pros further down the path toward the close.

The most potent process I’ve ever encountered for designing proposals is included. Alan Weiss, one of the best brains on this planet has mentored me directly on his methodology, so he was generous enough to offer his content. I highly recommend every one of Alan’s books, as well as his consulting work, mentoring programs and workshops.

You’ll read some amazing advice with supporting data on sales contests (which I encourage companies to begin, right after training – to reinforce newly acquired behaviors).

The section on lead generation is huge – with every possibly way and place to find prospects. Even if your company provides marketing for you, you’ll want to review this to make sure nothing is missing from your opportunity management strategies. I believe this is the most comprehensive list of it’s kind, anywhere.

900+ pages full of fantastic content, great exercises, funny & insightful stories, and much more.

I’m looking for senior sales executives of major corporations in the following business categories to review this work and offer a couple sentences to use inside the book when it’s published.

In an Omaha Slumpbusters youth baseball tournament that is designed to coincide with the NCAA World Series, 13 year old team winners used an illegal player in order to advance and win the tournament.

The Minnetonka Attack team was slaughtered in their three pool games; 17-5, 15-3 and 9-0. Slaughtered is the term which refers to stopping the game early when a team is badly overmatched.

So the team was seeded 2nd to last in the Silver Bracket.

The Minnetonka team then played Barrington Stampede in their opening game of tournament play, which becomes single elimination. In that game, the team intentionally used their best pitcher beyond his allowed innings.

When the Barrington coaches asked the tournament director to address the use of the pitcher, Triple Crown Sports Director Keri King decided to punish Minnetonka by having the player removed from the game, along with his coach. The rules state:

*If pitching rules are violated and the infraction is detected, the situation will be reviewed and consequences may include elimination of team from the event and suspension for the following year, coach and/or player ejection.

So the leader of Triple Crown removed a player from a game he wasn’t supposed to play in anyway and suspended him from the next game where he was ineligible to play as well.

Explain what the punishment is here?

A team which had gotten their butts kicked badly in every game played to this point decided that it had to cheat to win.

End results? ZERO consequences to the Minnetonka team or their coach. It would make some sense to possibly remove the two during pool play, but cheating in the championship bracket must be taken as seriously as possible. As the cheating was intentional, the consequences should have been more severe.

But the score stood with Minnetonka winning by 2 runs.

So one team of 13 year old baseball players was eliminated from their tournament because an opposing youth baseball team coach felt winning was above ethics. And another team went on to win a tournament on the back of their coach’s lack of integrity.

Would you want your kid to play for this man?

Would you want to lose to this man?

I shared this story with 6 or 8 coaches (as well as several parents) after this incident and later that Saturday evening at the NCAA College World Series game. The emotional response by each coach was identical. Nobody said “That’s too bad” or “That sucks.” The responses I got was outrage. “You spent $1300 to play in this tournament, team parents spent close to $15,000 on hotel rooms plus gas and some airfares to get to Omaha and the tournament director doesn’t have the guts to penalize a team that cheats?”

I am embarrassed for Triple Crown Sports.

Isn’t it ironic that you can divide kids playing baseball into two categories – those who make good decisions and those who don’t?

And we have a sports leader who makes a horrible decision, setting a terrible example by approving a team’s intentional decision to cheat and win.

Triple Crown Sports had tarnished their reputation as an organization that works with kids in sport. The highest standard we can teach our kids is to be honest. They all know who Barry Bonds is, they might have an opinion as to whether he cheated or not. They might not even care about Mr. Bonds.

But two teams of kids at the Omaha Slumpbusters Tournament just learned you can cheat and get away with it.

It would be interesting to interview the winners’ parents and find out how many of them are okay with their coach’s lack of integrity.

Another fascinating conversation might be held within the Minnetonka youth baseball community to find out how this is being addressed.

I’m in Dallas, TX preparing for a day of training, when the nightly news comes on with this shocking headline;

Bedbug infestations have exploded over the last few years!

Video close ups of the nasty little things provide enough icky feelings to make the newscast a hit – for the station and the source of the data (more on that momentarily).

I go online. A Google search shows 1st page listings with increases of the insect in the states of New York, Tennessee, Texas, South Dakota, Arizona and California. London, England was also under siege.

The next day I ask my training attendees who’s heard the bedbug news? All 30 hands go up.

“Keep your hand up if you were surveyed about an increase in bedbugs at your home.” All 30 hands go down.

So how exactly does one measure an increase in bedbugs across our already insect-ridden planet?

Did I forget to mention the National Bedbug Summit that just convened in Chicago?

That’s newsworthy – unique and a bit funny – so the national media picked it up and just parroted back to the public the data provided by the founders of this first-ever summit.

And what a surprise that all the attendees benefit by charging hotels and motels loads of money to destroy the beasts.

And if you wanted help for your home, that’ll be about $1,000 to eliminate them from your place.

In an act of intergalactic irony, you will have to leave your house and stay at a local hotel while the home’s bedbugs are being destroyed. So you might just bring back new ones with you, to replace what you just paid to remove.

Here’s what’s important for business pros to know about this story.

You are responsible for your own success.

Not getting enough leads – you’re responsible.

Not enough closed business – you’re responsible.

Not getting enough national or local publicity – you’re responsible.

What are you going to do about this?

You are responsible for your own success.

Sleep on that, and (I apologize for the obvious ending) don’t let the bedbugs bite.

It’s early morning and daughter, Abbie jumps into bed with my Princess Bride and I.

“Mom & Dad, do you know where the wind goes when it blows by? And, where does it come from in the first place?”

My wife is silent. I get the science questions, so my two ladies look at me and I reply.

“Where does the wind come from? We’ve been told not to talk about that.”

The laughter dies down. I catch an elbow from the wife and I reach for the notepad next to our bed to write this thought down. A thought that piggybacks on my joke.

“What are they not talking about in selling during your sales training?”

Language.

Language is the answer and it’s a big deal. See, the use of persuasive language strategies is the most neglected area of any sales training (and leadership and management and customer service and on and on).

GOT INFLUENCE? If not, send me an email and I’ll respond with a little paper on some big language tips. Dan@SalesAutopsy.com.

The focus of all these forms the future of selling. It’ll be found in my next book, The Secret Language of Influence. Stay in touch for more tips to come.

One more thing, I’ll be covering this as part of my sales training presentation at The American Society for Training & Development’s International Conference next week. Have a peek at the details (Wed, May 19th).Sales Training What’s Missing?

A computer game retailer revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of online shoppers, thanks to a clause in the terms and conditions agreed to by online shoppers.

Hilarious! People don’t read their contract when they purchase online and sell their souls to Game Station in the UK http://www.gamestation.co.uk/. The outstanding wording reads…

“By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.”

GameStation’s form also points out that “we reserve the right to serve such notice in 6 (six) foot high letters of fire, however we can accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by such an act. If you a) do not believe you have an immortal soul, b) have already given it to another party, or c) do not wish to grant Us such a license, please click the link below to nullify this sub-clause and proceed with your transaction.”

Bummer for all those people who had other plans for eternity. Though most people probably have no plans for their souls at all.

Selling pros – how long do you hang onto your clients? Do you have a deep enough relationship that you can count on their money for at least a mortal eternity?

After the sale you want to keep engaged, send your buyer unique and funny content like this. Let them know you’re thinking about them.

Does that absolutely delight you when a personal relationship does that? Then do it with these people who feed your family as well.

Keep close to your clients and nobody else will come along and steal their time, money, or souls. Do that well and you’ll spend eternity in selling heaven.

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.

Here are some recent “winners…”

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like socks in a dryer without Cling Free.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Whoa! Great entertainment, graphic images, but a painful expose’ on how poorly people communicate today.

How well do you get your meaning across? Linguists would identify your language as either “well-formed” or “poorly-formed.”

Be on the lookout for my new book, The Secret Language of Influence, later this year. Gain GREAT communication skills and improve your ability to lead, manage, sell, and most importantly, work with your personal relationships.

Anyone signed up for my ezine at www.SalesAutopsy.com will get first notification of the book launch.

I designed the sales training program for a national financial services company (you would recognize their name). Their targeted buyers are seniors.

Working off over 3 dozen objections, I crafted multiple responses to each. This reply is legitimate, it’s funny, so it gets a resistant prospect to laugh.

Objection: I’m too old to buy an annuity.

Answer: We have sea turtles older than you as clients.

Two things here (well three, if you include everybody loves sea turtles):

Do you have multiple responses to every one of your top 6 objections? I do this exercise with each of my consulting clients. It’s also now being built into a best-practices sales training experience for www.ASTD.org. So know the top ways you get pushback and be prepared to react.

Do you have ability, the words, to make prospects laugh? Okay, I’m biased because I use humor to write, speak and train all day, all month, all year. But there’s nothing as potent to disarm a buyer than something that says, “okay, that’s enough arguing, let’s be friends, have some fun and figure out how to work together.”

Work on those two things and you’ll have a successful selling career that lasts longer than, you guessed it, a sea turtle.

APRIL FOOL’S JOKE ON MY KIDS’ SCHOOL! Ballots for each student were put in all the classrooms to vote on a new school mascot.

The Marion Jordan “Blue jays” are no longer viable since the blue jay is considered the “bully” of the bird world. The ballot (you can see the pdf New Mascot Ballot here) had this written on it…

Recent research shows that Blue Jays, our school bird, are the bullies of the bird world. They chase other birds, even squirrels, away from birdfeeders. They are always picking fights because they don’t want to share.

Since Marion Jordan has policies against bullying we will be removing the Blue Jay from our school and asking our students to…

“Staff Development” read the invitation I received from Penny. I was being asked to attend Effective Strategies for Classroom Behavior Management.

The presenter/trainer/speaker/expert was a gentleman with lots of letters after his name (this included BS which is funny, ha ha BS, but also strange since nobody brags about their Bachelor’s degree, since if you have a Masters – he did, you already have a BA or BS, and to top it off the guy was also an MD).

He was from the esteemed state of Mississippi.

Now, I have many readers from MS, most likely in the thousands and probably all quite successful. But it’s sad to report that the kids from this state are a bit behind the curve in academic performance. So I replied to my SPAM of the week sender…

Penny, I’m curious. I don’t know why you sent this to me, or where you got my name.

But you offer an event I won’t attend featuring an expert from Mississippi, a state that’s ranked 46th in the country.